LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 2014

Hilda Nelson’s and Laurie Barros’s testimony echoed Leila McClain’s. It also took Barros two tries to make it to the stand. She collapsed like a rag doll three steps into the courtroom and hyperventilated. Roberts lifted her to her feet.

Barros took the stand with the simmering fury of a dismissed victim of attempted murder who was forced to face her attacker in court yet again. He’d served a paltry eighteen months of his four-year sentence for assaulting and attempting to murder her and had gone on to kill and kill again.

Speaking for MIA Tonya Jackson were Louis Antonio Tamagni and Wayne Spees, former members of the San Diego Police Department who had worked as patrol officers on the night of October 25, 1984, in the area of Thirty-Sixth and G Streets, exactly the same patch of scrub and trash where Laurie Barros had been dumped by the side of the road only a month earlier. In an isolated area lit only by the moon and the headlights of the patrol car, the silhouette of a black Thunderbird appeared in front of them. They hit the high beams and the red light, and when Sam exited the vehicle and pulled his usual routine about having makeup sex after having a fight with his old lady, these cops actually checked. He’d had others pull away, no questions asked.

Spees stayed with Sam while Tamagni found Tonya Jackson, upper torso and head crammed onto the floorboard of the back seat, legs spread, beaten unconscious, gurgling blood and gasping. They called an ambulance, followed behind with Sam. He told them the hospital exam wasn’t going to show any rape, just hands around her neck, and that he should have killed the bitch. Neither one of them would ever forget that night nor the debacle that followed. They had done everything right, from their model first response to dotting every last i and crossing every t in the reports. They’d not only caught him in the act, they’d done a heroic job with the follow-through, and still, they’d watched him walk away. Now look at this mess.

A flurry of other prosecution witnesses offered both forensic and law enforcement testimony. Roberts took the stand and explained her role in the CCSS, the investigatory steps, and the chain of custody surrounding the evidence.

Pentz called a criminalist and trace analysis expert in shoeprint and tire track examination who testified to the footprint and a criminalist who testified to an unidentified male DNA profile in the original Apodaca genital swabs. Sam did not testify on his own behalf. He’d done so before with positive results, appearing forthcoming, casual, unconcerned, so it was anyone’s guess if they’d put him up there again, but he remained silent.

On August 29, 2014, Silverman wove the narrative and the science piece by piece into a half-day-long closing argument that presented the evidence both physical and circumstantial. She humanized the victims and appealed to common sense. What were the chances all three victims would be found murdered with the same MO in a five-mile radius with Sam’s DNA on them?

Silverman’s steady pace was most people’s sprint: willful, deliberate, premeditated.

SILVERMAN: All of the evidence that we’ve presented over the course of the last week or two proves that this particular defendant is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. If there is another reasonable interpretation of the evidence and therefore you decide the defendant is not guilty, that’s one thing; but I would think you would be hard-pressed in a case like this to be able to find another reasonable interpretation of the evidence.

These victims in this case have been dead for over 25 years. It is time—and you are the jury—it is time that justice is served in this case. In this case, justice demands that you find this particular defendant guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, along with the multiple murder special circumstance, and that you finally find some resolution for this case.

When Pentz was up, he took a little dig, promising to be to the point. He acknowledged the horror and emotion brought up by the graphic and disturbing testimony, distinguished between direct and circumstantial evidence.

PENTZ: As I ask you now to spend the next few minutes listening to my comments, I’m fully aware that some of you are saying to yourselves: why should we render justice to him? Why should we set aside our emotions for him? Why should we be careful for him?

Well, everybody comes to justice at some point. And she has, lady justice, a blindfold over her eyes. And she holds a scale. The idea is that you weigh without attending to who it is that comes before justice; neither rich, poor, powerful, meek, the saintly or the worst sinner.

Someone with the worst imaginable past comes for justice, and still justice requires we close our eyes and weigh objectively, without emotion, without passion, fear, prejudice.

Well, we start here. We start with this idea.

We start with the idea that whoever it is that comes before you starts out innocent.

Starting out innocent or not, after a difficult day of deliberating, grappling with the physical and circumstantial evidence, the jury reached the opposite verdict. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Sam stared ahead with a flat expression as the clerk repeated three times, “We the jury in the entitled action find the defendant, Samuel Little, guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree with special circumstances.”

Sam muttered under his breath—must have messed up his deal with God to wind up in this room full of crooks, whores, liars, dogs. Even right then, the bitch detective popped an M&M into her mouth and winked at him. He shot her a curiously goofy smile and waved as he was wheeled out. The jury, the families, and the prosecution team hugged and cried outside.

The next time Sam saw any of them was almost a month later at his sentencing. He held a crumpled piece of paper in his hands.

Family members held their victim’s impact statements.

Pearl Nelson teared up. The paper in front of her and her voice shook in tandem.

NELSON: Audrey Nelson, she’s my mother. She is a beautiful soul. We all have paths taken in life, do we not? Audrey had a hard path. She got caught up in the world. She was badly burned in a fire. She was away from her family, and on June 16, 1976, she gave birth to me, and she loved me so much. I was in her arms for a year before she had to give me to her parents.

I know this was a hard choice for her to make. She did this so I could have a better life. Audrey knew that she couldn’t give me all she dreamed for me. Times were hard, and we were separated for many years. I was 13 when the police showed up. That day I found out that she had been murdered and nobody knew who had done this.

What I did know is that I was bonded to her and I yearned for her daily. The reason why my mom was in Los Angeles in the first place is because she had gotten her life back together and she was on her way to reunite with me. She always loved me and I loved her, and this long-awaited reunion was taken from my fingertips.

All I ever wanted was my mom. Instead of saying hello and hugging her, I had to say good-bye. How can I ever forget that moment when I put down that rose at her burial. I never buried anyone before, let alone my own mother. I had been waiting for her.

Laurie Barros didn’t have anything prepared, but she stood and claimed the years of shame and blame and pain back, in Jesus’ name, for all the victims.

Guadalupe Apodaca’s family went next. Sam shifted in his chair, asked Pentz how much of this bullshit he had to take. Sam began interrupting the proceedings. He shouted, “I didn’t do it!”

Sam called on God as his only true judge.

ZAMBRANO: Your honor, my name is Tony Zambrano. I am the son of Guadalupe Apodaca Zambrano. And I want to tell that piece of shit right here: you fucked up… You think this is over? It is not over by a long shot. I have been looking for you for a very long time. Fuck you. Remember me. You will see me again.

The judge cautioned Sam to behave before he spoke.

LITTLE: This conviction was brought on by lies. And liars coached by liars. I hope that in the new trial, if I get one, the evidence that was withheld and looked over will be brought up by my attorneys in a fair trial. The obsession of labeling me as a serial killer without any proof, any bodies, was a legal lynching. Speculation and surmising is not proof.

On September 25, 2014, Samuel Little received three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Maintaining his innocence, he held up a defiant fist against the injustice as he was wheeled out.